art blog since 2009
Here’s a selection of half a dozen of the most exciting contemporary art shows from around Britain this month. Written for Culture24. Agnes Martin, Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge Martin’s minimal paintings, characterised by airy colours and hand-drawn grids, map out a fragile, yet peaceful, interior world. It makes sense that the Canadian-born artist took to painting …
May 15, 2010
Exhibition: Modern Times, De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill-on-Sea, until June 13 2010 Somewhere between art and architecture sits a drawing by minimalist sculptor Fred Sandbeck. His pencil and chalk plan for a Zurich gallery construction hovers in mid air, reminding us of the Utopian potential of pictorial space. The architectural role of this work would …
April 24, 2010
Exhibition: From Sickert to Gertler – Modern British Art from Boxted House, Brighton Museum & Art Gallery, until September 12 2010 Long before Brit Art, there was British Art. In the early 20th century this was typified by the painterly, figurative work of a group centred around Camden in London. Compared with contemporaries in Paris, …
April 19, 2010
Exhibition: Helen Frik – Difficult, Chapter, Cardiff, until May 9 2010 Most art shows demand just time and attention. This one put out an urgent appeal for homemade soft toys. Along with the usual mental graft, it required considerable craft. Many snips and stitches later, these objects can be enjoyed with childlike wonder. Helen Frik …
April 7, 2010
Exhibition: Artes Mundi 4: Wales International Visual Art Exhibition and Prize, National Museum Cardiff, until June 6 2010 Olga Chernysheva’s photos of a natural history museum in Moscow can now, by a strange quirk of fate, be seen in a natural history museum in Wales. But the scenes captured by the Russian artist are a …
March 19, 2010
The UK’s biggest art prize, Artes Mundi, is vying to become the most talked about. At £40,000 it is worth twice as much as the Turner, which should provide twice as much scope for controversy. While installing work by shortlisted artists at National Museum Cardiff, the organisers make clear their intent. “We’ve taken down a …
March 18, 2010
Exhibition: Richard Hamilton – Modern Moral Matters, Serpentine Gallery, London, until April 25 2010 More than 50 years since Pop Art began, it is a 1960s aphorism which best explains the varying effects in this show. Marshall McLuhan may have coined the phrase, but it is Richard Hamilton who really demonstrates the adage that “the …
March 4, 2010
Exhibition: Here and Now – 2nd Year Fine Art BA (Hons), University of Brighton, until February 23 2010 It will typically take an art student three years to hone their technique, but to give a piece a great title can be the work of seconds. Here and Now is a group show by second year …
February 16, 2010
Exhibition: Ian Breakwell – The Elusive State of Happiness, QUAD Gallery, Derby, February 13 – April 18 2010 Ian Breakwell led a well-recorded life. Between the 1960s and his death in 2005 he captured many of its details in a largely unpublished visual diary. Some is typed, some handwritten. There are drawings, photos and collages. …
February 12, 2010
Exhibition: Richard Grayson – An Exhibition, De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill on Sea, until March 14 2010 The show is simply called An Exhibition, but music and words feature as heavily as visual art in this five-year retrospective of works by Richard Grayson. A Country & Western band, from Australia, play tunes that occasionally borrow …
February 6, 2010